


Liminal

by AllThoseOtherWorlds



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: But not really because nobody dies, Friendship, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Genetic Enhancement, Ghosts, So much medical handwaving I'm so sorry, Somewhat minor roles for everyone other than Julian? I don't know when to tag characters, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Weird things happen to Julian, not the main plotline but I work it in a little, shuttlecraft accidents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllThoseOtherWorlds/pseuds/AllThoseOtherWorlds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julian Bashir wakes up in his quarters and tries to go about his day, only  to discover that he's gone missing in a shuttlecraft accident and nobody can see or hear him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek. I do not make money from this.
> 
> Do not expect high levels of medical and/or telepathic accuracy.
> 
> comments and/or constructive criticisms are appreciated!

Julian blinked his eyes open, squinting against the dark light of his quarters. Everything was where it ought to be, and nothing was there that ought not to be, and there was no ostensible reason to be alarmed.

Something was wrong.

He got out of bed, going through the early-morning motions as if it were any other day. Inside, his mind was spinning at a thousand miles per hour, tracing his tracks and looking for clues.

How had he gotten here? Well, presumably he’d gone to bed, but he didn’t remember doing so. Nor did he remember the previous night, a symptom usually indicative of alcohol or a serious head wound, but he knew neither was affecting him. He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered, but couldn’t. He knew who he was and what he did and where he was and who he knew, but he had no idea what he had last been _doing_.

Now thoroughly shaken, he decided to head to the sickbay and give himself a check-over before anything else happened. If nothing else, it would set his mind a little more at ease to know whether this issue was medical or psychological. _Or genetic_ , some dark corner of his mind whispered helpfully, but he ignored it - there had been no issues before and there would be none now.

Stepping out into the corridor, he squared his shoulders and started toward his place of work. The sickbay was soothing and familiar to him, and he found himself relaxing as he entered it, despite the forbidding Cardassian architecture of the station. There was a nurse on-duty, but she was busy logging samples from the recent bout of semiannual health checkups, and he didn’t want to bother her.

Instead, he slipped into the back and grabbed a medical scanner, aiming it at himself as he examined the readings.

 _None_.

Frowning, he rebooted the scanner and tried again.

He blinked. _Well, that_ _’s strange._ Still, a scanner breaking wasn’t unheard of, so he set it aside and tried another, but to no avail. Now entirely confused and more than a little unsettled, he stepped back out into the main room and addressed the nurse.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Nurse Skala, but would you mind checking these scanners for me? They don’t seem to be working and I’m a little concerned.”

She didn’t respond, and he stepped a bit closer to draw her attention. “Nurse? Skala, are you okay?” He waved his hand in front of her face, and she turned to look in his direction. She stared at him, brow furrowed but eyes blank, and then blinked a few times and went back to her work.

He frowned. Something was clearly wrong, and it went beyond a few broken scanners. He looked around the sickbay again, hoping to find something out of place or unusual, some clue as to what might be going on. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, however, and he sighed before leaving the room. It was probably nothing, some misunderstanding or easily-solved problem, but he would still rather be safe than sorry.

He approached the turbolift and waited for the door to open, but nothing happened. This wasn’t really unusual, given that the station was old and that things broke sometimes, but it was frustrating and combined with the broken medical scanner, somewhat unlikely. Still, there was nothing else to do but hit the manual override button and step inside the turbolift.

“Ops,” he said, listening as the turbolift utterly ignored his command. “Fine,” he huffed, pushing the “Ops” button. “We’ll do it your way.” Not all of the destinations had manual buttons, but Ops was important, and it was helpful to be able to get there even if something was broken. The button was, thankfully, not broken, and he heard the turbolift start up with a low hum. Soon enough, it slowed and stopped and he stepped out into the centre of operations.

“Good morning,” he said, greeting the young Lieutenant just finishing up the night shift. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t respond. He was getting more concerned now, and he tried not to think about what would happen if visiting the Captain yielded similar results. His mind had already come up with several theories as to what was going on, and he was trying very hard not to think about any of them.

He wasn’t being entirely successful, but he was trying. There was no point in getting worked up over theories without any evidence to back them up.

His efforts to ignore his brain were interrupted by Captain Sisko’s voice coming through the door to his office.

“Still no sign of him?” the Captain asked. _He sounds tired._

“No, Sir,” came Jadzia’s reply. “Major Kira is still out searching, but she hasn’t had much luck.”

There was a pause, and Julian walked the few paces over to the door to see the Captain at his desk and Jadzia standing next to it. He tried to enter but was once again foiled by the door until he tried the manual override, which was setting off alarms in his head that he once again ignored in favour of the conversation happening in front of him.

His two coworkers had looked up when the door opened, and were now mildly confused but definitely not registering his presence.

“Captain?” he said, waving a hand. “Jadzia?”

There was beat in which he almost dared to hope they would acknowledge him, but then the Captain shook his head and looked back at Jadzia.

“Tell her to come back,” he said. “I want Doctor Bashir returned to us, but we can’t have her out so long. Someone else will have to take over.”

Jadzia nodded. “We’ll find him,” she said, but she didn’t sound hopeful.

Julian wanted to scream. “I’m right here!” he settled for instead. “I’m standing right here in your office!” He knew it wasn’t going to do anything, since it wasn’t like anybody had heard him so far, but he couldn’t really help himself. He didn’t handle being ignored all that well, even when he was reasonably certain it wasn’t intentional.

Suddenly, he remembered the turbolift and the door, and how they hadn’t worked. More importantly, he remembered that the manual overrides _had_ worked, and he walked up to the Captain’s desk and grabbed a spare PADD.

He had intended to open up the Ops report it contained and add a few lines stating his presence and asking for their help, but as soon as he grabbed the tablet the Captain and Jadzia started to stare at him.

Or, rather, they were staring at the PADD, because Julian suspected he was invisible. He let them exclaim in surprise and call Odo as he opened the file and typed out a message. He finished just as Odo entered the room and looked up to see the Captain and Jadzia pointing phasers at him. He rolled his eyes, figuring that if he wasn’t going to be seen he might as well take what little advantage he could from it.

“Who are you?” the Captain asked. “Why are you here?”

Well, at least they were presuming he was some alien life-form trying to communicate, and not an enemy. That made it easier for him to flip the tablet around and stick it in the Captain’s face without getting shot.

Captain Sisko took the PADD carefully, and read aloud the extra lines printed on it.

“Captain, this is Doctor Bashir. I don’t know what happened, but nobody can see or hear me and none of the scanners or motion sensors are registering my presence.”

“What?” Jadzia asked, stunned. Odo made a “hmph” sound that indicated a similar sentiment.

“Do you have any way to prove your identity to us?” the Captain asked, holding the tablet loosely as though inviting Julian to take it.

The Captain startled a little when he took PADD, but kept his composure. Jadzia and Odo were both still watching the device, their faces a hard-to-read mix of emotions. Well, Jadzia’s was, anyway - Odo’s face was blank, but Julian was sure there was a hard-to-read mix of emotions in there somewhere.

He wrote out a response on the tablet and passed it back to the Captain, hoping that it would be enough.

Sisko read his message silently, then looked up at the others. “It’s his security code”.

“It’s got to be him.” Jadzia seemed hopeful but also concerned. “Who else would have his codes?”

“There are ways to get information from people,” Odo said.

“For now,” the Captain decided, “We will work under the assumption that you are, in fact, Doctor Bashir.” He turned a warm smile in Julian’s direction. “We want to help you, Doctor, but we need to know what’s going on. I’m going to call a meeting of the senior staff, and _you_ are going to get familiar with _this_.” He opened his desk and grabbed an empty PADD, holding it out into the air so Julian could take it. “I suggest you set it to the audioadaptive functionality.”

Julian took the offered device and began setting it up. Unlike the last PADD, this one was optimized for audioadaptivity, which mostly meant that it came equipped with what was essentially text-to-speech. Julian had seen this sort of device before, since people sometimes used them for communication instead of verbal speech, so it didn’t take him long to figure out the gist of it as the Captain called the other staff members to the conference room.

He followed the Captain in, not wanting to use the manual override again, and sat down at one of the chairs, hoping that the floating PADD would be enough of a clue for others to not sit there. He looked up from the tablet in time to see Jadzia send a sympathetic glance in his direction. He smiled at her, but felt foolish when he realized she wouldn’t see his attempt at reassurance. He resisted the urge to sigh, or scream, or do something, _anything_ , to get people to see him. It would be somewhat gratifying to let it out, he was sure, but when nobody responded he knew he would feel worse.

Instead, he swallowed his frustration and tried to just feel grateful that he had their attention via the PADD, and that he had some way of communicating. Considering his situation, he was probably lucky that he could actually use it at all.

Soon enough the other officers arrived. They all gave him - or at least, the floating PADD - odd looks, and Worf put his hand to his phaser, but nobody said anything until they were all seated. Julian noticed that Miles looked more tired than usual, and remembered the Captain’s words about how he’d supposedly disappeared.

As though prompted by Julian’s thoughts about him, Miles was the first to speak.

“Sir, why is the PADD floating?” he asked, and Julian didn’t bother to stifle the small laugh that escaped him as his friend cut straight to what everyone was wondering.

The Captain sighed, rubbing his forehead before looking up at his crew. “As you all know,” he said. “Doctor Bashir went missing several days ago in what he assume was a shuttlecraft accident. Major Kira has just returned from searching for him.” He looked at Kira, expression questioning.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said. “We’ve searched, but we still can’t figure out exactly where the shuttle went down.”

The Captain nodded, accepting the report. “You may not have any leads, Major, but we do.” He gestured in Julian’s direction. “Doctor Bashir contacted us today. Evidently, we cannot see or hear him, but he is here and his communicating via PADD.”

“How do we know it is him?” Worf asked, sharing a look with Odo.

Julian sighed, frustrated with everyone talking over him. The Captain was about to respond, but before he did Julian activated the PADD and entered a message.

“I gave him my security code,” the PADD read. “And by the way, I know you can’t see or hear me but would you please stop pretending I’m not here?”

Everyone started, both surprised and a little guilty, and Julian felt a surge of satisfaction when the next question was directed at him, rather than at the Captain.

“Julian?” Miles asked. “You’re really here?”

“As far as I know,” he said. “But I don’t remember a shuttlecraft accident. I don’t remember a shuttlecraft at all.”

“What do you remember?” Jadzia asked.

Julian thought about it. This morning, he hadn’t remembered anything, but he had more information now, and perhaps he could recall something.

As he was thinking, the door opened again to admit Garak, who looked not at all concerned about showing up to a private staff meeting he definitely had not been invited to.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, taking a seat at the table, “but I heard there was an update on the whereabouts of Doctor Bashir?”

“Garak,” the Captain started. “You’re really not-”

“Let him stay,” Julian said via the PADD.

Garak, unlike the others, did not start. Instead, he looked in Julian’s direction and smiled. “Doctor?”

Julian took a few moments to enter a response on the PADD, but fortunately everyone was polite enough to give him time. He wished idly that he had some sort of way to signal he was typing. There was probably an audio setting for that, actually, but he had to finish this first. He typed up the last of his message, hit play, and activated the “typing” sound while his message played out.

“Yes, it’s me,” he had typed. “I don’t know what happened. I remember waking up this morning in my quarters, and feeling like something was wrong. I went to the medical bay to check myself over, but the scanners wouldn’t register me. Nobody’s been able to see or hear me, and the motion sensors don’t register me either. I don’t remember going missing.”

Garak took in all this information quietly, leaning back as he processed it. While he thought, Jadzia repeated her earlier question.

“Julian, what _do_ you remember?” she asked. “From before this morning.”

“I don’t know,” Julian typed out, just to let them know he was thinking about it. He was quiet for a while after that, as was everyone else. He thought over the information he had, trying desperately to remember a shuttlecraft accident. Of course, if they hadn’t found it, maybe there hadn’t been an accident? There must have been a shuttlecraft though. When had he last boarded a shuttlecraft? He found himself muttering under his breath, talking it out, since he knew they wouldn’t hear him anyway.

“There was a mission?” He finally typed out. “Some sort of medical emergency?”

“There was an outbreak of Cirda on Taxis Four,” The Captain confirmed. “You were sent to help because you survived it when you were younger and have an immunity now. None of the other medical staff were safe to go, so it was just you. We lost contact with you before you arrived, but we haven’t found the shuttlecraft anywhere along the route.”

Julian was starting to remember now. He’d been notified of the outbreak in the middle of his shift, and had thrown together a bag in two minutes flat before boarding the shuttlecraft. The flight itself was still shaky, but it was coming back in bits and pieces.

“I’m remembering,” he said to the others. “The flight was smooth at first. I was reviewing the literature on Cirda and on Taxis Four. I just can’t seem to remember what happened after that.”

He started speaking aloud to himself again, trying to jog his memory. “I was reading,” he said. “Cirda is highly contagious, but not actually fatal if there’s enough medicine. They couldn’t send the other medical staff  because Bajorans and Vulcans are both more susceptible to it than Humans and Taxisians, so I was alone. I was, what, halfway there? Halfway there. And then… And then-”

And then it hit him.

“I crashed!” he exclaimed aloud, before hurrying to communicate the newly-remembered information.

“I crashed,” he typed out, admiring how much more cool and collected it sounded coming from the PADD. “On Havith 5, about three hours along the route. It’s uninhabited and icy, and I crashed near the equator. I don’t remember anything after that, except that as I was crashing I felt something. I don’t know what it was, but it was strange. Almost like being around a strong telepath.”

He could see a few confused looks, probably at his telepathy comment, but they were quickly overshadowed by the more concrete information he’d provided.

“Thank you, Doctor,” the Captain said, tapping his commbadge. “I need a medical team dispatched to Havith 5, _now_.”

Julian could see a million questions crossing the faces of his friends, and quite frankly he still had many questions himself, but at least they had a planet now.

Of course, that raised the obvious question, which was-

“If you crashed, why are you here?” Kira had been silent up until now, presumably tired from searching for him, but she had apparently recovered enough to ask the question everyone was wondering.

“An excellent question, Major,” Garak said, leaning into the table. “If you are here, why send medical to Havith? If you’re not here, who are we talking to? An interesting dilemma.” At the Captain’s stern look, he hastened to add, “Though of course, it is best to send medical just in case. We do want you safe, my dear Doctor.”

“Thank you, Garak,” Julian said. “I’m not sure what’s going on. I feel like I’m here, but if I’m really freezing to death on Havith I think I’d appreciate a medical team.”

There was silence for a long moment, until Worf voiced the fear that had been nagging the back of Julian’s mind since this all started.

“Assuming you did not die in the crash.”

The others looked away uncomfortably, so Julian knew that the same fear had occurred to them also.

“Well, if I am dead, I’m still not going to be left out,” he said. “I’d hate to miss my own funeral.”

“Julian-” Miles started, before apparently realizing he didn’t know what to say.

“Nobody’s dead yet,” the Captain said firmly. “Let’s hope it stays that way.” He stood up. “It’s still two and a half hours until the medical team gets to Havith 5, and I don’t plan for this meeting to take that long. You’re all dismissed.” He turned to Julian. “Doctor, please keep me updated on any new developments.”

Julian nodded, then realized the Captain couldn’t see him and responded via PADD instead. “Yes, Sir.”

The room slowly dispersed, although Julian suspected he would be ambushed by Miles, Jadzia, or Garak as soon as they saw the PADD float out the door. He grinned to himself as he saw the three of them turn to him as he pressed the manual override and step out into Ops.

“It’s probably best if the rest of the crew doesn’t see a floating PADD,” Jadzia said. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

“We can go to my quarters,” Julian said, standing so that the other people on the bridge wouldn’t be able to see the PADD he was holding. The other nodded and followed him and the PADD to the turbolift, which opened this time as it sensed his friends’ presence.

When they finally got to his quarters, he addressed them all once again.

“Thank you,” he said. “For being here. Just in case, you know,” He couldn’t bring himself to even type if out.

“Now, none of that,” Miles said. “We’re just here to keep you and us distracted until something happens.”

And keep him distracted they did. Julian wasn’t sure how they managed it, since Garak didn’t really get along much with Miles, and the three of them didn’t have much in common with each other except that they cared about him, but somehow it worked. They bickered and laughed and conversed and two hours passed in the blink of an eye.

“Something’s happening,” Julian said, interrupting the debate they were having on holoprogram design. “I feel-”

He didn’t get to finish his message.

———

When Julian came to, he was lying on a biobed in sickbay and Nurse Skala was fussing over him. She smiled in clear relief when she saw that he was awake.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” she said, grabbing a scanner and pointing it at him. Julian was relieved to see numbers appear on the readout this time, and even more relieved that they indicated he was mostly okay.

“You’re going to be okay,” Skala told him, oblivious to his enhanced vision and corresponding ability to read the screen of her scanner through its reflection on the dark glass behind it.

“What happened?” he tried to ask, but what came out sounded a lot more like, “I’m alive?”

“Yes, you are,” she told him. “But barely. We were really worried for a few hours. You had pretty severe frostbite but you’ve made an excellent recovery.”

She smiled at him again and left him to himself and his thoughts as he tried to figure out just what the hell had happened earlier. He would just ask, but he wasn’t sure if she had been told about his presence on the station during the crash, and resolved instead to wait for one of the senior staff (or Garak) to visit him.

He didn’t have to wait long. Presumably, Skala had informed the Captain that he was awake and Sisko had anticipated his questions, because he was visited not ten minutes later.

“Hello, Doctor,” the Captain greeted him. “I’m glad to see you’re awake.”

“I’m just glad you can see me,” Julian replied, quietly. “Do you know what happened?”

The Captain nodded. “Apparently there’s some sort of a low-level telepathic field over that planet,” he explained. “Just barely detectable, and we only noticed it because of your comment about the planet feeling strange. When you crashed, the shock sent you into a coma and the telepathic field activated somehow and projected you here.”

Julian frowned. “But if I was just a projection, why could I do things?” he asked. He was really regretting not taking that “Overview of Telepathy” class at the Academy.

Sisko shook his head. “We’re not sure. The best we can guess is that you have some sort of low-level telekinetic ability that was enhanced by the field. You did show a minor potential for it during your Starfleet test, so it’s certainly possible.”

“Well, whatever happened, I’m glad I’m here now,” he said. “How are things on Taxis Four?”

The Captain smiled. “Almost nobody died,” he said. “When you were reported missing Starfleet redirected a ship in the area and the doctors onboard gave them all the help they needed.”

Julian sighed in relief. “I’m glad,” he said. “How long was I gone?”

“It’s been five days in total since you left for Taxis,” Sisko said. Julian opened his mouth to speak but the Captain cut him off. “And it’s going to be at least another day before you’re back on duty, Doctor,” he said. “Is that clear? You’ve been half-dead and you need time to recover.”

Julian nodded, chagrined. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good.” Sisko smiled. “Now, I’d better leave before your nurse kicks me out.”

Julian watched Skala eyeing the Captain warily from her desk and grinned. “Probably,” he said.

“See you soon, Doctor,” Sisko told him, leaving the sickbay.

Julian smiled to himself as the Captain left.  He could see his vitals on the readout above the biobed, and his reflection in the dark glass of the wall divider, and he knew that he would soon see his friends and they would see him and everything would return to how it should be.

It was good to be home.


End file.
